hawkfish

I call it soda.

I am not sure about your club but in mine, we train for points. The idea is to throw full speed and full power punches and kicks and make body contact but with control. I am not sure of your age but if you are younger and your opponent is near your age, you should talk to your Sensei about this person. Taking this into your own hands and hurting him or getting hurt yourself is something that you don't want. If you are both adults and he should know better and you have already talked him about this, you should talk to you Sensei about him anyway. I would not worry one bit about feeling weak because you talked to your Sensei. If you get hurt or this guy hurts someone else in your club because you didn't say something will make you feel worse. I am an assistant instructor and I expect students to tell me if someone is hitting too hard or doing something that they shouldn't be doing. The last thing I want is someone getting hurt or quitting Karate because some other student is not adhering to the rules or acting like a bully.

I cannot do the splits and am a good amount away from them even though I stretch often. With that said, as long as you do not have any physical issues, I think any one can do the splits as long as they practice and have patience.

I am not going to Blog World Expo but I would like to. I agree, Darren is awesome.

One thing that has helped me is that I sit in seiza on a thick carpet or a thick towel for a few minutes at a time at home each day. Start out with maybe 30 seconds and work your way up a few seconds at a time. In one of your dojo's, before class, I sit in seiza for at least a minute or two to get my ankles and knees ready for class to start. This helps stretch my ankles and knees before we move on to the tile floor to start class. Just take your time trying to gain flexibility and don't push it too fast. You don't want to hurt yourself and not be able to train because of it.

I agree. It won't be the same with Mr T or the others to me.

I find that practicing on the carpet at home helps me. What is too painful? Ankles, knees or other?

Some of those have to be glued together.

At this point my only five would be: Heian Shodan Heian Yondan Bassai Dai Hangetsu Kanku Dai

I will only list 10 here but I read 50 or more each week. http://www.problogger.net/blog/ http://www.dumblittleman.com/ http://www.livecrunch.com/ http://www.techcrunch.com/ http://slashdot.org/ http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/ http://www.dailyblogtips.com/ http://www.dpreview.com/ http://www.lyved.com/ http://karatejutsu.blogspot.com/

I never got into the Harry Potter series but my wife loves it. I will be sure to show her the trailer that you posted here.

I would be afraid of breaking those floating stairs. I would hate to wake up in the middle of the night and try to walk down the alternating stairs

I use Wordpress myself but I have my own host. They do allow you to have your blog on their website and it is free. You can start simple and get more complex as you learn. http://www.wordpress.com/ Another option is Google blogger, which is free and pretty easy to use. http://www.blogger.com/

I really am interested in Star Trek but I am not sure how it will be without the old cast.

That looks really nice.

I am on there too. http://www.linkedin.com/in/dougwoj

Congrats!

That is really cool. I really like the pool in Jade Mountain, St. Lucia but the one in Hotel Caruso, Ravello, Italy looks like the nicest to me.

My favorite would have to be Colecovison. Below is a youtube video of the TV commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GpptJusOjM

4 days per week.

Oddly enough, my son and I always used to do kumite in the grocery store.

My grandfather trained in Karate when he was in the army. My wife, son and I take Karate together. My son is a third kyu and my wife and I are both second kyu's.

I have done kihon and kata many times in my back yard and in my living room too.

The amount of kihon that we do in each class varies but my Thursday class is the most consistent. We start out with kicking drills to get warmed up. Front snap kicks, side thrust kicks, back kicks, roundhouse kicks and a combination of all of them while staying in one place. After that we will normally do some of all of, moving forward and backward in a front stance, rising, downward, inward and outward blocks with reverse punch. Another group of moves is, moving forward and backward, backstance with knife hand block or back stance, knife hand block, front snap kick with nukite or reverse punch. We also do straddle leg stance, stepping across side thrust and side snap kicks. The order or amount of basics that we do depends upon how the class is doing. If half the class is in space , Sensei will have us work on more or less of what I call standard kihon. If everyone is "on", Sensei will work on something different or more complicated. There have been days where we spend 20 minutes up to over an hour on kihon. Also, if examinations are approaching, we spend more time on kihon than other things such as kumite or self defense.

Not knowing the reason would bother me a great deal, especially if I was training in that style for a long time. Are they saying that everything you learned up until now was not good? My Sensei shows me little tweaks to the Shotokan kata's that I practice and many of these tweaks are not from my style but he always tells us why he does them and where he got them from.